Banknote deposit machine, processing system and method

ABSTRACT

A printed note deposit machine, comprises: a user recognition unit identifying a user with an authenticated person; an inlet unit serving as a receiving teller in which printed notes are deposited; a dispensing unit receiving printed notes deposited in the inlet unit to dispense them in sequence; an identifying unit classifying the dispensed printed notes into four categories of authenticated notes, counterfeit notes, unidentifiable notes, and rejected notes, and identified them with the four categories; a temporary money holder temporarily storing the authenticated, counterfeit, and unidentified notes but the rejected ones therein; a plurality of storage cells storing the printed notes after they are temporarily stored in the previous stage; and a rejection unit accumulating the printed notes identified with the rejected notes by the identifying unit to return them to the user. A printed note deposit system, comprises: a plurality of the printed note deposit machines; a database apparatus installed in a central office and receiving transaction data from the memory of each of the printed note deposit machines to accumulate the transaction data; and a trace unit matching the transaction data accumulated in the database apparatus with transaction data on the detected counterfeit or unidentified notes to track down a user of the unauthenticated notes.

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION

The present invention is a Divisional application of U.S. Ser. No.10/821,736

This application is based upon and claims the benefit of priority fromthe prior Japanese Patent Application No. 2003-105330, filed on Apr. 9,2003; the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates to printed note processing machine andsystem that performs a receiving teller process for deposit of printednotes including currency bills.

In depositing money in a bank or its alternative money exchange system,it has typically been conducted that deposited currency bills are allidentified with and categorized into authenticated notes (includingdamaged notes), unauthenticated counterfeit notes, unidentifiable notes,and rejected notes due to an overlap of more than one notes or a cantedposture of notes.

It is also very common that any printed note recognized as thecounterfeit note, the unidentifiable note, or the rejected note but theauthenticated note is returned as the unacceptable to a customer.

It is a crime to use counterfeit notes, and when currency bills used forpayment or deposit in a bank are recognized as counterfeit notes, thecurrency bills must be cautiously examined if they truly arecounterfeited notes. The counterfeit and unidentifiable notes might be areal proof in judging that the suspected of counterfeiting is guilty.

In the state of the art, proposed and well known is a money order tellermachine capable of examining deposited paper notes to give a warning ifany of the notes is recognized as highly suspected of beingcounterfeited (see Japanese Patent No. 3,368,906).

Such a prior art printed note deposit machine immediately returns thecounterfeit and unidentifiable notes without a temporary capture, andhence, an opportunity to identify them and then a proof of a crime arelost.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The present invention is made to overcome the aforementioneddisadvantages in the prior art, and accordingly, it is an object of thepresent invention to provide a printed note deposit machine and systemthat ensure a detection of counterfeit notes and a succeeding capture ofthem for a real proof of a crime.

The printed note deposit machine in accordance with the presentinvention is comprised of a user recognition unit identifying a userwith an authenticated person, an inlet unit serving as a receivingteller in which printed notes are deposited, a dispensing unit receivingprinted notes deposited in the inlet unit for dispensing them insequence, an identifying unit classifying the dispensed printed notesinto four categories of authenticated notes, counterfeit notes,unidentifiable notes, and rejected notes and identified them with thefour categories, a temporary money holder temporarily storing theauthenticated, counterfeit, and unidentified notes but the rejectedones, a plurality of storage cells storing the printed notes after theyare temporarily stored in the previous stage, and a rejection unitaccumulating the printed notes identified with the rejected notes by theidentifying unit to return them to the user.

In this machine, after a customer is authenticated by a bank card and/ora finger print he or she has, a plurality of ID sensors each producingfour-category information are used to classify deposited currency billsinto appropriate one of the categories, and the classification result isstored in a memory for every note of the deposited currency bills.

As a consequence, a fully cautious examination can be conducted forevery note of the deposited currency bills to determined if it iscounterfeit or not, and thus, a crime can be uncovered and the suspectedcan be inquired about how he or she has come to use the counterfeitednotes. To attain such features, operating specifications may simply bechanged without addition nor modification of the mechanisms, and such aminor revision can be applied to any machine that has already beencommercially available.

A printed note deposit system in accordance with the present inventionis comprised of a plurality of the aforementioned printed note depositmachines, a database apparatus built in a center office receivingtransaction data stored in the memory of each of the printed notedeposit machines to cumulatively store the transaction data, and a traceunit matching the transaction data stored in the database apparatus withtransaction data on the suspected counterfeit or unidentifiable note totrack down a user of the unauthenticated bank notes.

In this system, since the identification data of the deposited currencybills and the data on a customer (user) who has made a deposit of themoney are correlatedly organized in database to carry out the matching,it is possible to trace an suspected use of the counterfeit orunidentifiable note back to a particular person who has deposited it,and in this manner, a detection of the counterfeit notes and a captureof a real proof of using such counterfeited note can be facilitated.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram showing a structure of an exemplarycurrency bill deposit machine according to the present invention;

FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating a control system and associateddata transmission in the exemplary currency bill deposit machineaccording to the present invention;

FIG. 3 is a flow chart schematically showing an operation of theexemplary currency bill deposit machine according to the presentinvention;

FIG. 4 is a view depicting a concept of taking currency bills in theexemplary currency bill deposit machine according to the presentinvention;

FIG. 5 is a view depicting a concept of dispensing and counting thecurrency bills in the exemplary currency bill deposit machine accordingto the present invention;

FIG. 6 is a view depicting a concept of returning a rejected note in theexemplary currency bill deposit machine according to the presentinvention;

FIG. 7 is a view depicting a concept of sending some notes from atemporary money holder to a money storage in the exemplary currency billdeposit machine according to the present invention;

FIG. 8 is a view depicting a concept of returning and receiving someauthenticated notes from the temporary money holder in the exemplarycurrency bill deposit machine according to the present invention;

FIG. 9 is a view depicting a concept of returning some authenticatednotes after transferring them to a rejection unit;

FIG. 10 is a diagram showing details of transaction data;

FIG. 11 is a typical diagram illustrating process steps beginning with adetection of a counterfeit note till tracking down the suspected user;and

FIG. 12 is a list providing details of sample information on a currencybill read by the exemplary currency bill deposit machine.

DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

Embodiments of the present invention will now be described in detailwith reference to the accompanying drawings. An embodiment of a currencybill deposit machine will be detailed only by way of example below.

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram showing a structure of an exemplarycurrency bill deposit machine according to the present invention.

As can be seen in FIG. 1, the uppermost portion of a stack structure isnamed receiving and paying teller unit 10 of which left end is a depositunit (inlet unit) currency bills as many as fifty in number can bedeposited where a note or a bunch of currency bills are, when depositedby a customer, detected by a photo sensor (not shown) and thentransferred through a money chute 12 to a dispensing unit 14 at theright end of the unit 10. In the course of the chute 12, a rejectionunit 13 is located in parallel with the chute and capable of storingrejected notes such as decrepit currency bills as many as one hundred innumber, for example, and the rejection unit is linked with the chute byshunting a track in returning the rejected notes to the customer. Therejected notes, when accumulated in the rejection unit 13, are detectedby the photo sensor (not shown), and the number of the currency bills toreturn at a time can be designated in a range from 10 to 100, forexample, as desired.

The dispensing unit 14 has another photo sensor (not shown) detecting abatch of the currency bills chuted and accumulated therein. Thedispensing unit 14 has a capacity of holding such currency bills of anyamount as many as 100, for example, and the currencies deposited thereinare let out, piece by piece, in sequence in response to a given command.

The middle portion of the stack in the currency bill deposit machine isreferred to as transfer unit and denoted by reference numeral 20. Thetransfer unit 20 transfers the currency bills ejected on thepiece-by-piece basis from the dispensing unit and then proceeds withsucceeding steps on them as required in sub-units respectively locatedin position along its distribution stream, such as an ID unit 21determining if the currency bills are authenticated or not, and decrepitor not, and a serial number reader unit 22 reading a serial numberunique to each currency bill. The serial number reader unit 22 isavailable as an optional unit and is not necessarily included.

In this middle portion, a temporary money holder 23 is also provided totemporarily store the currency bills in response to the determinationresults from the ID unit 21. The temporary money holder 23 has acapacity of 100 mixed currencies in maximum number, for example, and aprocess setting can be varied by giving a designation of the maximumnumber ranging from 10 to 100 and a command of the full detection to anassociated counter. The temporary money holder may work in a take-upstyle which lets the stored currency bills out in the reverse sequenceto their incoming order, or alternatively, it may be in a stack typestorage.

Information on each of the currency bills resulted from the processingin the ID unit 21, the serial number reader unit 22, and the sensor (notshown) contain those listed in FIG. 12 and described below:

(a) ID numbers of currency bills: Consecutive numbers given to all thecurrencies handled in one batch transaction;

(b) Identification results: Attributes unique to each of the currenciesand obtained by the currency bill recognition process, including acategory code (determined by the comprehensive examination of detectionson each sensor), a country code, a denomination code, an orientation(front or reverse) code, a serial number, a denomination determinationlevel (a criteria of determining the determination), and so forth;

(c) Sensor data: Identification results from each of the sensorsrespectively located in position, including a category of RED from atransmission color sensor 1, a category of INFRARED from thetransmission color sensor 1, a category of BLUE from a transmissioncolor sensor 2, a category of INFRARED from the transmission colorsensor 2, a category from a reflection infrared sensor 1, a categoryfrom a reflection infrared sensor 2, a category from a fluorescentsensor, a category from a magnetic sensor, a category from a threadsensor, and the like; and

(d) Detailed currency data: Image data on each of the currency bills.

Now, the structure of the currency bill deposit machine will bediscussed again, and the lower portion of the stack in the machine is astorage unit 30. The storage unit 30 consists of a front cassette 31collecting bank notes of different dominations separately or mixed banknotes together, a rear cassette 32, and a counterfeit note storage or acapture bin 33 storing counterfeit notes and unidentifiable notes. Thefront and rear cassettes respectively have a capacity of 1500 notes at atime, for example, and they are respectively featured with a near-fulldetection by a photo interrupter (not shown) and a cassette-fulldetection of detecting 300 more bank notes added after the near-fulldetection.

The counterfeit note storage 33 has a maximum capacity of 50 bank notes,for example, and it also is featured with detection of the absence orthe presence of currency bills by a photo sensor (not shown), anear-full (e.g., 40 bank notes) detection by a counter, and a full(e.g., 50 bank notes) detection similarly by the counter.

There may be two or more of the front cassettes and the capture bins ifdesired, and the counterfeit notes and the unidentifiable notes may bestored separately.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating a control system and associateddata transmission in the currency bill deposit machine.

The transfer unit has a main CPU built in to control the whole machine.The main CPU is a microcomputer of relatively high speed processing. Thereceiving/paying teller unit 10, the ID unit 21, the serial numberreader unit 22, the temporary money holder 23, and the cassette 30respectively have a receiving/paying teller unit CPU 101, an ID unit CPU211, a serial number reader unit CPU 221, a temporary money holder CPU231, and a cassette CPU 301, which undertake part or all of jobs forcontrol and data transmission allocated to them. Each of the CPUs is asingle chip microcomputer which may be of lower speed and lower costcompared with the main CPU.

Each of the CPUs performs not only the control of the associated unitbut does the data transmission to and from the main CPU. In such a case,the ID unit CPU 211 sends ID data via a communication interface to themain CPU while the serial number reader unit CPU 221 transfers serialnumber data via the communication interface to the main CPU. Thereceiving/paying teller unit CPU 101, the temporary money holder CPU231, the cassette CPU 301, and the main CPU send and receive controlcommands to and from one another via the communication interface.Counterfeit identification data and counterfeit processing records fromthe main CPU are sent to an external administration computer, which isin communication with transmission system via a communication interface203 to give instructions and data.

An operation of the currency bill deposit machine will now be describedwith reference to FIGS. 3 to 9. FIG. 3 is a flow chart schematicallyillustrating the operation of the machine, and FIGS. 4 to 9 are diagramsillustrating the operation as in the machine structure depicted in FIG.1.

When a banking card is inserted in the machine by a customer, first acustomer information is read, and then, a customer's order to depositmoney in his or her account is processed. In this point, a fingerprintof the customer may be taken to add to or make reference to the customerinformation.

Once the deposit process is started, the machine receives an enablesignal from the administration computer and clears various count data tokeep a shutter of the inlet unit 11 open on standby till money isdeposited. When deposit of a bunch of currency bills in the inlet unit11 is detected and an entry unit (not shown) is used to give aninstruction to start counting, the shutter is closed to chute thecurrency bills from the inlet unit 11 to the dispensing unit 14 asdepicted in FIG. 4 (Step S1).

Then, as shown in FIG. 5, the dispensing unit 14 lets the depositedcurrency bills out piece by piece (Step S2). The currency bills let outinto the ID unit 21 are counted, and their respective fraudulentness anddenomination are determined (Step 3) to identify with authenticatednotes, counterfeit notes, unidentifiable notes, and rejected notes,respectively. If recognized as authenticated (Step S4), counterfeit(Step S5), or unidentified (Step S6), they are temporarily held in thetemporary money holder (step S7). The temporarily trapped ones havetheir respective ID data stored sequentially as in FIG. 12.

If recognized as not authenticated, not counterfeit, and notunidentified, they are identified with rejected notes due to an overlapof more than one notes or a canted posture of notes and chuted through ashunted track to the rejection unit 13 (Step S21). Such a classifyingstep is repeated till the dispensing unit 14 ejects the last currency(Steps S8 and S22).

When the dispensing unit 14 is completely empty, the rejected notes oncestored in the rejection unit 13 are sent to the inlet unit and returnedto the customer, as shown in FIG. 6.

Then, after the machine receives a disable signal from theadministration computer of hierarchically superior order and closes theshutter, the currency bills temporarily stored in the temporary moneyholder 23 are handled, that is, they are either received or returnedselectively (Step S9).

FIG. 7 illustrates a case of the reception (when determined to receivethe currency bill at Step S9) where the currency bill from the temporarymoney holder is stored in the cassettes if it is authenticated (StepsS10 and S11), or otherwise, if either counterfeit or unidentified, theyare seized in the capture bin 33 (Steps S10 and S12). In the formercase, the currency bills of different denominations may separatelystored in the front and rear cassette, or the mixed currencies may firstbe stored in the front cassette and then in the rear cassette after thefront cassette is full, regardless of their denominations.

When received, the currency bills have their respective serial numbersread and added to the identification data to store for an individualcurrency if the machine optionally includes the serial number readerunit. Especially, it is desirable to save the serial numbers of thecounterfeit and unidentifiable notes seized in the capture bin 33.

In returning the currency bills (as determined at Step S9), as shown inFIGS. 8 and 9, the authenticated notes are, after stored in therejection unit, returned from the inlet unit to the customer (Steps S13and S14) while the counterfeit or unidentified notes are seized in thecapture bin 33 (Steps S13 and S12).

The transaction after undergoing the processing as mentioned above isfurther processed to collect and store various transaction data in theadministration computer.

Particulars of the transaction data are listed in FIG. 10 where a singletransaction data contains a machine number, a transaction number (codedin combination of processing types such as deposit, payment,rejection/return, and the like with consecutive numbers of the jobs), atransaction starting time indicated by sec/min/hour/day/mon/year, atransaction completing time, a customer information containing acustomer's account number and finger print, a count informationcontaining a subtotal and amount of bank notes of each denomination, atotal of the mixed bank notes, a total amount of all the money, and thelike, a currency information on an individual bank note as detailed inFIG. 12, etc. The currency information contains the ID data of each banknote as mentioned above.

In this embodiment, the transaction data are made for each or each bunchof currency bills that are stored or returned, and alternatively, thetransaction data may be created only for each or each bunch ofcounterfeit and/or unidentified notes.

In this way, the machine according to the present invention facilitatesdetecting a counterfeit note and tracking down a user of theunauthenticated bank note because it stores in memory the customer(user) information and the currency information such as ID data of eachbank note in relation with each other. This process design will bedescribed below.

FIG. 11 is a typical diagram illustrating process steps beginning with adetection of a counterfeit note till tracking down the suspected user.

It is now assumed that a branch office A of a bank 100 installs twocurrency bill deposit machines 1000 and 1001 where severalunauthenticated or unidentified notes have been accumulated in thecapture bin.

The currency bill deposit machines 1000 and 1001 cumulatively store inmemory transaction data containing the machine number, the currency dataon each of the deposited bank notes, and the customer information, andtransfer all the transaction data once everyday from a terminalcontroller 101 of the branch office A to a banking center 300 viacommunication line to store the received data in a customer informationdatabase 301 therein.

The suspected unauthorized or unidentified notes seized in the capturebin of the currency bill deposit machine are transferred to a judgingorganization 200 (e.g., the Europe Central Bank in Europe) to review iftheir fraudulentness is true. When the organization 200 judges that thenotes are unauthentic, they are sent back to the branch office A of thebank 100 and deposited in the machine 1001 again to retrieve the ID dataincluding the user's name as “X”. Simultaneously, the currencyinformation (transaction data) of the counterfeit notes are immediatelytransferred to the banking center 300 via the terminal controller 101and stored in the database 301.

The database 301 is connected via the terminal controller 302 with acomputer system serving as a trace tool 303 directly or indirectlythrough communication line to retrieve the transaction data associatedwith the machine 1001 from all the accumulated transaction data. Aftermatching category data associated with the user X with those of eachbank note obtained from each sensor, the customer information related tosuccessfully matched results from the currency information is obtainedto identify the suspected user of the counterfeit note with theauthenticated customer. If two or more of the notes in the data meet thesame matching reference during this matching procedure, additionalmatching is carried out by means of comparison of their image data witheach suspected note to identify the note.

In FIG. 11, the trace tool 303 works along with the intervening terminalcontroller 302 installed in the banking center, but connecting the tracetool with the terminal controller 101 in the branch office A permits animmediate local detection. Alternatively, the trace tool 303 connectedwith the terminal controller 101 in the branch office A of the bank 100may be used to match information in the database 301 with thetransaction data in the name of the user X directly read out from thecurrency bill deposit machine.

Thus, in the aforementioned system, the customer information and thecurrency ID data of each bank note are correlatablly stored in memory,and any suspected counterfeit note is seized in the currency billdeposit machine without immediately returning it to a user unless thecounterfeit note is matched with the data accumulated in the machine toassuredly determine its fraudulentness and identify the user with anauthenticated customer, and as a consequence, a fully cautiousexamination can be facilitated in uncovering a crime of usingcounterfeit notes or counterfeiting imitation money, inquiring about howthe suspected has come to use the counterfeited notes, and arresting atrue criminal.

As has been described, since the currency bill deposit machine accordingto the present invention is capable of obtaining customer information,classifying deposited printed notes into four categories ofauthenticated notes, counterfeit notes, unidentifiable notes, andrejected notes, classifying data detected from each sensor in the samecategories to store them in relation with the customer information, andtemporarily storing the printed notes and then seizing counterfeit andunidentified notes in dedicated storage cells, the suspected bank notescan be reviewed cautiously and the suspected user can be easily trackeddown.

Also, the currency bill deposit system according to the presentinvention incorporates the above-mentioned currency bill deposit machineto build database of printed note identification data and customer data(i.e., data on users of the machine) in relation with each other for thesubsequent matching jobs, and hence, the suspected user of counterfeitor unidentified notes can be identified with an authenticated customerwhile a detection of the counterfeit notes and a capture of a real proofof using such counterfeited notes can be facilitated.

To attain improved features of the machine and system according to thepresent invention, operating specifications may simply be changedwithout addition nor modification of the mechanisms, and such a minorrevision can be applied to any machine that has already beencommercially available.

1. A banknote deposit machine, comprising: an inlet unit in whichbanknotes are deposited; an identifying unit classifying receivedbanknotes into four categories of authenticated notes, counterfeitnotes, unidentifiable notes, and rejected notes; a temporary moneyholder for temporarily storing therein the banknotes classified asauthenticated notes, counterfeit notes, and unidentified notes by theidentifying unit; and a plurality of storage cells provided inside themachine, respectively, for storing the banknotes which have beentemporarily stored in the temporary money holder, wherein thecounterfeit and unidentified notes temporarily stored in the temporarymoney holder are stored in predetermined storage cells of the pluralityof the storage cells, the authenticated notes temporarily stored in thetemporary money holder are stored in any of the plurality of the storagecells other than the predetermined storage cells for the counterfeit andunidentified notes, and in response to an instruction to return thedeposited banknotes, the authenticated notes temporarily stored in thetemporary money holder are returned to a user, and the counterfeit andthe unidentified notes temporarily stored in the temporary money holderare stored in predetermined storage cells of the plurality of thestorage cells.
 2. The banknote deposit machine according to claim 1,further comprising a rejection unit for accumulating the banknotes whichhave been classified as rejected notes by the identifying unit.
 3. Thebanknote deposit machine according to claim 1, wherein the temporarymoney holder is single in number.
 4. The banknote deposit machineaccording to claim 1, wherein the identifying unit includes a serialnumber reader unit to read a serial number unique to each of thebanknotes.
 5. The banknote deposit machine according to claim 1, whereinthe identifying unit includes a plurality of sensors which detectcharacteristics of the banknotes to classify the banknotes into thecategories.
 6. The banknote deposit machine according to claim 1,further comprising: a user identification unit identifying a user; and amemory in which transaction data is stored, the data including at leastone of the user information obtained by the user identification unit,the banknote information obtained by the identifying unit andinformation of the machine.
 7. The banknote deposit machine according toclaim 6, further comprising a communication unit transmitting thetransaction data to an external apparatus.
 8. A banknote processingsystem, comprising: a plurality of the banknote deposit machines asdefined in claim 6; a database unit, installed in a central office, forreceiving transaction data from each of the banknote deposit machines toaccumulate the transaction data; and a trace unit comparing thetransaction data accumulated in the database unit and the transactiondata on the detected counterfeit or unidentified notes.